Earthquake on Iran-Iraq borders kills hundreds
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake has shaken the northern border region between Iran and Iraq, killing at least 396 people and injuring thousands more.
Most of those who died were in Iran’s western Kermanshah province, where a search for survivors has started.
Nine more people died in Iraq, where residents fled from their homes into the streets in the capital, Baghdad.
“I was sitting with my kids having dinner and suddenly the building was just dancing in the air,” a Baghdad resident, Majida Ameer, told Reuters news agency.
“I thought at first that it was a huge bomb. But then I heard everyone around me screaming: ‘Earthquake!'”
Many homes in the predominantly Kurdish mountainous area are made of mud bricks and are vulnerable in quakes as large as Sunday’s.
In Sarpol-e Zahab, a city of about 85,000 people, the sides of a number of tall buildings collapsed, forcing many people to spend the night outdoors in freezing conditions.
Rescue teams were being hampered by landslides, emergency workers said.
The quake hit at 21:18 local time (18:18 GMT) about 30km south-west of Halabja, near the north-eastern border with Iran, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.
About 1.8 million people live within 100km of the epicentre, the UN estimates.
On the Iraqi side, the most extensive damage was in the town of Darbandikhan in the Kurdistan Region.
“The situation there is very critical,” Kurdish Health Minister Rekawt Hama Rasheed told Reuters news agency.
Read full article on BBC, November 13, 2017.